


break it like you're breaking a code

by findyourfortunefalling



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: M/M, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-08
Updated: 2019-10-08
Packaged: 2020-11-27 14:35:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20950001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/findyourfortunefalling/pseuds/findyourfortunefalling
Summary: "Are you planning to sit in a chair like a person today, or are we all eating our breakfast off of you this morning?""Kinky," Klaus purrs, but he rolls off the table anyway, and piles himself into a seat near the head of the table. Diego puts the plate of pancakes in front of him; he's put blueberries in them today. "Thank you, chef.""Eat," says Diego. "Quietly."Instead of replying, Klaus picks up a pancake with his fingers, stuffs the entire thing into his mouth at once, and chews noisily.Diego sighs, and goes back to the stove. "Man, I remember a time when you were house trained."





	break it like you're breaking a code

**Author's Note:**

> I have been working on this sonofabitch fic since MARCH. It's the first fic I started working on after watching the show. I've poked at it sporadically in between the various other filth I've produced, and now, at last, it's DONE and I can stop looking at it. It's... probably the most normal thing I've put out! And entirely consensual! So that's nice.
> 
> Title from All Nite (Don't Stop) by Janet Jackson. If I haven't tagged for something and you wish I had, please drop a comment to let me know.

Things get a little… weird, you might say, after they hit the pause button on the apocalypse. Klaus isn't too clear on the details of the wacky time hijinx they've pulled off; Five did try to explain, but since they got back to the Academy (still standing in this timeline, as solid and implacable as it ever was) Klaus has been a little preoccupied. Clearing out every pill and baggie and bottle of whatever he had stashed around the house took time, and slightly more long-term memory than he usually relies on. It's a long process. Some go down the sink disposal, some get flushed down the toilet- a big Saturday night ahead for the sewer alligators- and the last of his weed he buries under a cobblestone next to Ben's statue, carefully ensuring the bag tears, so the contents can get ruined by rain. He stands outside for a long time, smoking a disappointing cigarette, Ben's hand solid on his shoulder.

It's not the first time Klaus has thrown out all his shit at once as, like, a declaration of intent to Change As A Person, and not yet the longest he's been sober. Some of his thirty-day chips, though not all, he came by honestly. It is the first time he's thrown out all his shit himself while staying somewhere that is neither a squat nor court-mandated rehab, though, and that's new. He's- very, very cautiously- optimistic.

They all came back to the house together, is the thing, and while they all sort of tiptoe around each other like they're each expecting the others to bolt at any given moment, they're all still here. It's been weeks. Luther, still coming to terms with the final snip of the Hargreeves apron strings, rattles around the house like an oversized pinball on an unexpected bonus play; Allison says she's taking a career, whatchamacallit, hiatus, and with Patrick not letting her see Claire, doesn't seem to have anywhere else to be. Diego's crept out to do secret vigilante stuff a few times, and presumably he's been back to his little hidey-hole at the boxing gym to pick up his patrol gear and his favourite knives, but he's sleeping in his old bedroom more often than not. Five clumps around the place in his schoolboy shoes, leaving coffee cups and scribbled equations in his wake. He's brewing up some cockamamie scheme to take down the Commission via math, developing plans for repurposing the old training equipment into a safe environment for Vanya to learn to control her powers, and has been talking about getting a dog; which of those he wants first seems to change from day to day.

(Vanya doesn't really talk, now. They'd carried her back to the house, stiff as a corpse and bleeding from the ear, and Pogo- not dead, yay time travel- did his best to get her stable. She's back on her pills, though they're talking about stepping the dosage down over time. The other day she smiled at a comic strip in the newspaper.)

And Ben, of course, is here. He's with Klaus all the time, but with a clear (ha!) head and some practice, the others can see him too. That's been a lot. Lot of crying about that one, the first time Ben popped out of the air in the library, and some hugging, too, which was kind of nice. He's not always solid- manifesting him takes a lot out of Klaus, and he feels like shit enough of the time nowadays when he's not expending energy making Ben a real boy- but he's still around. Sometimes the others talk to him, and sometimes he talks back, using Klaus as, well. As a medium.

If it's like anything, it's like the time after they lost Ben, before Diego left and Klaus left and Allison got her first movie role. Guilty survivors, drifting around the house, awkward and hesitant and lonely in one another's company. Of course it's not anything like that time, because they're all still here, and dear old Dad isn't here to keep sending them out on missions like a member of their family hadn't just fucking died.

(Nobody has asked Five why he chose this time to return to, rather than jumping them back far enough to prevent Sir Reginald's death. Nobody needs to.)

Long story short, though, Klaus is bored. Rehab is boring, but there's a routine- group sessions, mealtimes, activities, and when all else fails, other people there going through similar shit. You can get a poker table together. There's the library, but he's never really been a book reading fellow, and non-fiction? God forbid. TV is, just... awful. Jerking off, always an old favourite in times of stress, is fine up to a point, but even he has limits. Knitting's okay. Everything else in this goddamn house is a tool for the care and development of the common or garden superhero. Bored bored bored bored booooooooored.

"You know what's great? Drugs," says Klaus, on his back on the kitchen table, dreamily addressing the ceiling.

"I'll take your word for it," says Diego, not looking up from the stove. Diego’s making pancakes again. Mom taught him how, probably, because his taste just like hers; whatever Ladies' Home Journal 1957 recipe Dad uploaded into her consciousness. Mom's around, still- again? Fucking time travel- and still flits around the house, dusting and tidying up, but she spends a lot more time alone in her room and the gallery, now. Diego's picked up most of the slack in that department. They're all more or less incapable of looking after themselves, but he's been the most willing to roll up his Kevlar sleeves and attempt to make things other than PB&Js.

"I mean, I would know. Drugs are amazing." Shifting onto his side, Klaus props his head up on his arm, and watches Diego work. "Most drugs are, like, an activity in themselves. Nothing is boring when you're high."

"Can be pretty dull for everyone else, though," Diego says, flipping a pancake with a twitch of the pan.

"Oh, tell me about it," says Klaus. "One time this guitarist invited me up to his apartment to 'hear some of his songs', and I'm thinking, sure, if that's what the kids are calling it these days, but when we got there, we smoked one bowl, not even particularly good weed, and he spent the rest of the night playing the same riff over and over again. Four notes. I fell asleep in self defense, and when I woke up, he was still going."

Diego snorts. "That sounds pretty boring to me, high or not."

"No, see, that's the thing. Sure, the guy was boring, but he had this cat- you know those super friendly cats you just can't cuddle enough? Incredible texture. Very melodious meows." Klaus rolls over onto his front, kicking his legs up behind him. "I was enraptured by this noble beast the whole time, barring my little nap, and I don't know how familiar you are with cats, but they really aren't that interesting when you aren't stoned. If I'd been sober, the whole encounter would have been a nightmare. With weed? Cat. Amazing."

"We're not getting a cat," says Diego. "We don't need any more creatures who shed and climb all over the furniture in this house."

"Boring," Klaus insists. He presses his forehead against the smooth wood of the table. "It could keep Ben company. Cats can see ghosts, you know."

"No they can't," says Ben, perched on the sideboard. Klaus flaps a hand at him dismissively.

"Don't prank Ben with cats." Diego turns, holding a plate, and looks in vain for somewhere to put it down. "Are you planning to sit in a chair like a person today, or are we all eating our breakfast off of you this morning?"

"Kinky," Klaus purrs, but he rolls off the table anyway, and piles himself into a seat near the head of the table. Diego puts the plate of pancakes in front of him; he's put blueberries in them today. "Thank you, chef."

"Eat," says Diego. "Quietly."

Instead of replying, Klaus picks up a pancake with his fingers, stuffs the entire thing into his mouth at once, and chews noisily.

Diego sighs, and goes back to the stove. "Man, I remember a time when you were house trained."

"Not really," says Klaus breezily, losing crumbs of pancake out the sides of his mouth. "You remember me displaying a certain level of compliance with Dad's regulations. Compliance I have since chosen to dispense with, as Dad was a bastard and his regulations were bullshit."

"You know, there's middle ground," Diego says, pouring more batter into the pan. "Not every social convention is founded on Dad being a prick.”

"Hey, I figure if the Reginald Hargreeves school of child rearing and the United States Army combined couldn't civilise me, I’m a hopeless case,” says Klaus, but he does pick up a fork, and use it to stab another chunk of pancake.

It’s quiet for a minute, save for the hiss of batter cooking, and the metallic sounds of the spatula moving around the pan. Klaus chews and swallows, and contemplates getting up for syrup. Ben’s looking at his pancakes with an expression of wistful resignation; he can be solid enough to eat, if Klaus is on his game, but he doesn’t need to, and the results of him dematerialising before food has had a chance to… do what food does, so to speak, are astonishingly gross. He’s got every right to be jealous. These pancakes are really good.

“I don’t think you’re a hopeless case,” says Diego, abruptly.

“Oh, well,” says Klaus. He blinks down at his pancakes. “That’s very charitable, but-”

“Don’t say anything self-deprecating.” Diego has one hand braced against the counter, and the other is gripping the handle of the spatula just a fraction too tightly. “Just. Eat your pancakes.”

Klaus doesn't really know how to react without saying something self-deprecating. That's kind of his brand. He finishes his second pancake in silence, watching Diego's back as he works.

"You're not a hopeless case either," Klaus finds himself saying. "Look at you go, you domestic goddess, you."

"When I said not to say anything self-deprecating, I didn't mean you should talk shit about me instead," Diego says wryly.

"No, I mean- pancakes," says Klaus, not entirely sure where he's going with this. "While I'm sure your Secret Squirrel vigilante hideout is charming in the right light, your whole, y'know, vibe doesn't exactly scream 'homemaker'. Yet here we are." He breaks off more pancake, spearing a blueberry right through the middle, and waves his fork for emphasis. "Blueberry pancakes. On clean plates! Eat your heart out, June Cleaver."

"I like cooking," Diego says, a little defensive, a little shy. "It's relaxing. Simple. And I like... I like taking care of people. Of you. Of all of you."

That's. Well. Emotional vulnerability is a rare currency from Diego; Klaus, who has been to therapy ever in his life, tucks the warmth of that away where he can examine it later. "Plus, all the knives," he says.

"Shut up." Diego puts another plate of pancakes and a bottle of maple syrup on the table, and sits down opposite Klaus. He opens the syrup, pours some on his breakfast, and hands the bottle across the table to Klaus, who takes it silently, trying very hard not to smile.

*

That happens a lot. Not specifically pancakes, but sometimes other breakfast foods. The eccentric orbits of each of the house's inhabitants, like comets spun off different planets, cross in odd places; Klaus and Allison smoking together in the courtyard, Five and Vanya tending to Vanya's gardening therapy seedlings in the greenhouse, Diego and Luther sparring in the old training rooms. Companionship without expectations is a new thing in their lives, but it's nice, even if they're not all that great at it.

The extent to which Klaus is not that great at it is probably why it takes him so long to really work out what they're all doing, in their various ways. They're being _kind_ to each other. Diego doesn't particularly love sparring with Luther, especially not now he's so much bigger and slower; he's doing it to help Luther acclimatise to his changed body. Vanya didn’t get a lot out of gardening therapy, but she gets a lot out of providing an excuse for Five’s quiet joy at coaxing green things out of soil. Acts of service are the one universal Hargreeves love language, however sneakily or sarcastically delivered. And they do love each other, for whatever reason.

Klaus is still itchy, still eye-gougingly bored, but it feels sort of different now he's looking for things to do. He wants to… contribute, or whatever, to this family good deed exchange. Unfortunately, Klaus is sort of terrible at doing things, especially for other people. “I can do nice stuff for people,” he tells Ben. “I've done nice stuff for people before, right?”

Ben gives him a long look over the top of his book.

“I _have_,” says Klaus, lighting another cigarette. He's smoking too much, lately, but the pleasure of getting ash all over Dad’s stupid old furniture has yet to wear thin. “There was that one guy? With the nose ring? I helped him move into his new apartment! That was nice.”

“You slept on his couch for a week, and when he kicked you out, you stole his wallet,” says Ben.

“Okay, bad example. I did nice things for the guys in the squad, back in... okay, you weren't there for any of that, but believe you me, you don't take somebody's latrine duty unless you’re the fucking soul of altruism,” Klaus says. He takes a long drag, looking up at the ceiling, and taps ash off his cigarette into the crystal dessert bowl he's using as an ashtray.

“Dave?” says Ben quietly.

Klaus blinks, keeping his eyes tilted up. “Yeah,” he says. Dave's a bit of a sore spot. Klaus has tried, on and off, to conjure him, but he won't come. Ben has theories about who lingers after death and who doesn't, based on the spirits who've hung around Klaus in the time Ben's been dead; he thinks Dave won't come because he’s at rest, or maybe because Klaus is alive and Dave would want him to live among the living, some shit like that. Klaus doesn't think about it if he can help it. “And some of the other guys, we'd- carry each others gear in our packs if someone was injured, cover for each other, swap watch shifts. I'm not totally incapable of doing shit for people, is what I mean.”

“I didn't say you were,” Ben says. He carefully dog-ears a page to mark his place, and puts his book down next to him. “You did things for your squad mates because you cared about them, and wanted to look after them. It's the same thing.”

“Well, yeah, but we don't have watch shifts to swap,” says Klaus testily. “I can’t barter good deeds for cigarette rations. I don't... have anything I'm good at, except bothering the dearly departed, which nobody wants, and providing sexual favours, which are out of the question.”

Ben shrugs. “Why?”

“Uh, well, you’re my _siblings_,” says Klaus, very slowly, like he’s explaining something to a child. “I can’t just- ‘oh hey, Luther, you seem tense, drop trou and I’ll see what I can do for ya’. You're supposed to be the one with morals.”

“Morality is meaningless to the dead,” Ben says. “I think it's one of those things you need glands for. But I don't think Luther would take you up on it; Allison would get jealous."

"Wait, that's a thing? Really a thing?" asks Klaus, incredulous. "Why do you know about it and I don't?"

Ben gives him another of those long-suffering looks. "Because you're going to be an asshole about it now you know," he says wearily.

"Hey!" Klaus takes a moment to gather himself before he says anything else- Ben is one thousand percent correct that his first instinct is to go laugh directly in Allison's face, and his second and third instincts are already cooking up jokes to drop in the middle of family dinner. They're mean, shitty instincts, though, and he's trying, kind of, to be a marginally less horrible person. And really, who are Allison and Luther hurting, if they've finally given in to their decade plus of sexual tension? Who gives a shit? "I hope they bring each other bliss," he says, in his airiest tone.

Ben narrows his eyes at Klaus suspiciously, and picks his book back up. "Don't strain anything,” he says.

“Oh, come on, that was barely even sarcastic!” Klaus lobs a pillow at him; Ben, as is usual when interacting with physical objects these days, looks pleasantly surprised when it bounces off his chest instead of going through him. “I put actual effort into not being a bad person, and this is the reception I get?”

“You're not a bad person,” says Ben. He flicks through to find his dog-eared page, and opens the book on his knee. “You've developed some maladaptive coping mechanisms that you're finding hard to switch off.”

“Jesus,” mutters Klaus. “What are you reading, Psychology Today?”

“Flowers in the Attic,” says Ben. 

Klaus chokes on a mouthful of smoke.

*

But now, of course, it’s a thing he’s _thinking_ about. Now he’s looking, he clocks the Allison-and-Luther-sittin’-in-a-tree situation right away, and feels a little shitty for being too self-absorbed to notice earlier. They touch more, in a wholesome but sweetly territorial way that makes his chest hurt a little, and they look… happy.

He waits, for a bit, to see if he’s going to feel weird or gross about two people he considers his siblings getting freaky with each other. Admittedly, he doesn’t have proof they’re getting freaky- they could be disappearing into Luther’s room to play Scrabble, or learn macramé- but he’s getting a vibe. It doesn’t yuck him out like he’d expected it to. (Other than feeling like Allison could do better.) It feels about as normal as anything in their lives feels, which is to say it’s weird as shit, but it’s fine. It’s fine.

Still, it knocks the wind out of Klaus's "no incestuous sexual favours" argument, since nobody else seems to mind, either. Too much PDA garners looks from Vanya and eye rolling from Diego, but nobody seems too upset about it; even Five, when he deigns to grace them with his presence at family meals, restricts himself to raised eyebrows. It's a genuine struggle to not give in to those mean shitty instincts and rib them about it, but Klaus is determined to not be the one to break the wordless armistice on belittling their siblings' incestuous happiness. Maybe this is how Klaus is proving his loves his family; by keeping his mouth shut, for once.

“You good?” Diego asks, after a particularly trying dinner. Allison had brought home sushi from the Japanese place two blocks over, and had, when it turned out Luther’s paws weren’t quite up to chopsticks just yet, spent the meal half in his lap, feeding him bites of maki like a maternal bird. It had been nauseating, and only Ben’s amused glances- Ben has an understandable aversion to sushi, but he likes to be present at family dinners- had given Klaus the strength to not say anything bitchy. Clearly the strain had been more obvious than he’d hoped.

“Dandy,” Klaus says, in a passably casual tone. “And how does the evening find you, brother dearest?”

Diego’s face does a funny little twitch. “M’fine,” he says. He pauses, looking over Klaus's shoulder at Allison and Luther, curled up together on a couch, watching something with an irritating laugh track on the crappy old TV. “It’s weird, right?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” says Klaus. “We just had sushi with our chimpanzee butler.”

Diego jerks his chin at Allison and Luther. Klaus turns to look at them; Allison's head is on Luther’s shoulder, and one of his big hands is stroking her hair. The urge to crack a joke about Luther practicing social grooming crawls up Klaus's throat, and he stifles it, but just barely. “That. Them,” Diego says, voice low. “It’s weird.”

Klaus shrugs. “They seem happy,” he says. “They deserve a little happiness, don’t they?”

“They’re our _brother and sister_,” says Diego.

Klaus shrugs again, surprised to discover he means it. “My alarm clock these days is a fishmonger who got stabbed to death in the alley in… I want to say the 40s? He starts screaming around 7:30 most mornings.” Diego opens his mouth like he wants to interject, but Klaus flaps a hand and continues. “What I mean is, our lives are not most people’s lives. If they’ve found something good, who cares if it’s weird?”

Diego looks back at them. Something complicated is happening on Diego’s face; it looks like six or seven different emotions are competing for facial real estate, and on Diego, who works pretty hard to limit his emotional expressiveness beyond Smartass and Knife, it’s unsettling to watch. “Yeah,” he says, softly. “Yeah, I guess.”

“And at least somebody in this house is getting laid,” Klaus says. Diego shoots him a look; annoyed, but relieved, almost. “God knows there’s not enough of that going around.”

“Shut up, Klaus,” says Diego, turning away and heading for the stairs.

“You should try it,” says Klaus cheerfully. He’s infinitely more comfortable needling people than he is being a voice of reason, and nobody responds better than Diego does. “Might do you some good, clear out the ol’ tubes-”

“Shut _up_, Klaus,” Diego says, climbing the stairs two at a time.

“Shake out some of the cobwebs!” Klaus calls, leaning against the bannister to watch Diego disappear down a corridor. He doesn’t get a response, but he’s smiling anyway.

Behind him, Ben clears his throat.

"What?" Klaus says, rolling his eyes. "I can't be polite about everyone's foibles at once. I'll sprain something."

"You've misinterpreted my 'ahem'," says Ben. "That was a 'have you given any thought to the thing I said the other day about comparative morality regarding incestuous sexual favours' ahem, not a 'leave Diego alone' ahem."

Klaus goggles, a little. "You think I should- with Diego? _Diego_?" He shakes his head in disbelief. "I don't think I'm precisely his type."

Ben shrugs. “Can’t know ‘til you ask,” he says.

“Possibly you were off communing with the infinite, but I literally just finished having a chat to him about how _weird_ he thinks Allison and Luther’s thing is,” Klaus says, gesturing up the stairs.

“Sure, Diego’s always so forthcoming about his feelings. Everything he says can absolutely be trusted,” says Ben. “What I notice, though, is you haven’t said anything about Diego not being _your_ type.”

Klaus gets that hot, prickly feeling on the back of his neck that heralds an unsettling personal revelation. It’s never ended well for him before, _learning_ things about himself, and Ben’s smile when he doesn’t answer- not a sarcastic smirk, an actual smile- isn’t reassuring at all.

*

Fucking Ben. He’s not wrong; Diego is definitely Klaus’s type. Inasmuch as he has A Type- he’s gone home with enough people for the sake of having someone’s home to go to that he’s not entirely clear on his own tastes, now, but his baseline is hot people who will put up with him, and Diego is both of those, most days. He’s got a nice face, and clever hands, and he puts on a tough guy front but he’s kind. And he’s _Klaus’s brother_.

...who Klaus maybe had a crush on, back in the day? Possibly. There are big chunks of his teens he literally doesn’t remember, but he used to flirt with all of his siblings while he was still learning how, and Diego was his favourite. Where Ben and Allison laughed at him and Luther blushed and scowled, he could always get a rise out of Diego. For a while, when they were getting older, he’d even started to respond, a little, teasing Klaus back.

And then Ben had died, just when they were all coming to terms with the idea that Five was really gone, and they’d all scattered, and the next time Klaus saw Diego was from the back seat of a squad car. For once, flirting hadn’t seemed like the right approach.

So, y’know, once upon a time, maybe. If he met a guy who looked anything like his stupid hot brother in a club (back when he went to clubs) said stupid hot guy would catch Klaus’s eye. There’s just so much history between them, the concept seems impossible.

'Impossible' doesn’t stop him thinking about it, though. Fuckin’ Ben.

It’s a week and a half of agony (and jerking off; _so_ much jerking off) later when Diego finds him lurking on the roof. Klaus is out of cigarettes and yarn for knitting projects again, and has chewed his fingernails down almost to the quick; he's resorted to perching in high places to people-watch. He's so engrossed in a dog walker struggling with the tangled leads of four excitable puppies that he doesn't notice Diego approaching, until Diego's hand lands on his shoulder.

"Oh, hi there," Klaus says, clutching his own chest and trying to get his breathing under control. "Fancy running into you in a place like this."

Diego sits down beside Klaus, and gives him a flat look. "You're avoiding me," he says. "Why?"

Klaus would really, really like a cigarette now. This would be an easier conversation to bullshit through with nicotine, and a prop for dramatic gesturing. “I can’t want some time to myself?”

“At dinner last night, you voluntarily sat next to _Luther_ instead of next to me,” says Diego. “You let him talk at you about dispersal techniques for excess static electricity buildup in space habitats for almost twenty minutes. Five had to throw a roll at him to make him stop.”

“Was that what he was talking about? Huh,” says Klaus, looking down at the street. The dog walker has untangled the leashes, but the smallest of the dogs- some sort of fluffy terrier- is now engrossed with a fire hydrant and refusing to move. “I heard ‘plasma conductor’ and assumed he was trying to convince me to donate blood.”

“On Tuesday, we bumped into each other in the hallway, and you literally _screamed and ran away_.” Klaus isn’t looking at his face, but he can practically hear the pout. “Just tell me what I did so I can fix it, man.”

Klaus sighs. The incident in question is vivid in his memory; Diego has omitted to mention the facts that he was, at the time, on his way to his room from the bathroom, that he was wearing only a tiny, tiny towel, and that he was still wet, and glistening all over the place like the cover painting on a Harlequin novel. The scream was a completely understandable sound of distress, under the circumstances. It had taken Ben half an hour to stop laughing. “Look, I’m sorry. You haven’t done anything wrong, I’m just… going through some stuff.”

“Whatever stuff you’re going through that’s got you treating me like a leper, you can talk to me about,” says Diego, doggedly.

“I really can’t,” says Klaus, trying and failing to keep a note of hysteria from creeping into his voice. “It’s not you, it’s-”

“If you say ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, I will push you off this building,” says Diego, conversationally.

If Ben were here, he’d say something sarcastic to break the tension, and Klaus would respond with something snarky, and then Diego would snark back, and it would be fine. It would all be fine. Only Ben isn’t here; he’s downstairs doing… whatever he does when he’s not narrating Klaus’s life, and Klaus is alone up here with his scary hot brother who carries knives everywhere he goes.

“Ben and I had this chat the other day,” he finds himself saying. His tongue feels weirdly thick in his mouth. “About how we, y’know, do stuff for each other. Like how you’re helping the big guy figure out how to move around in his new King Kong body.”

Diego kicks his heels against the facade of the building. “We’re just sparring,” he says, quietly. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing, it's _nice_,” says Klaus. “We’re just all so emotionally constipated that doing something nice for your brother makes you feel like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Thanks, Dad.”

“So you and Ben were talking about me and Luther sparring?” Diego has, at some point, shifted closer on the ledge. His shoulder isn’t touching Klaus’s, but it’s close.

“Not exactly,” Klaus says, distracted. “I was bemoaning my laxity in the ‘doing nice things’ department, and. Well. I made a joke about the relevance of some of my… skill sets.” He clears his throat, and circles a hand in the air in a very vague jerk-off motion; Diego coughs, and shifts his weight. “Ben mentioned Allison and Luther’s little understanding, and-”

“Are you ever gonna get to the fuckin’ point,” says Diego, lowly.

“Ben made a joke about me and you fucking but it turns out he wasn’t joking and now I can’t stop thinking about it,” Klaus says, in a rush.

Diego goes very still. Below them, on the street, traffic moves past at a leisurely pace, but the sounds of the cars don't quite fill the sudden, yawning silence.

“Feel free to push me off the ledge whenever,” says Klaus. “I would consider it a kindness.”

“You’ve been avoiding me because our dead brother said we should have sex,” Diego says tonelessly. "And you’ve been... thinking about it."

“That’s about the shape of it, yes,” says Klaus. “Look, don’t worry about it. It’ll pass. I’ve had sex thoughts about wildly inappropriate people before, and they usually-”

“Does it have to?” says Diego.

Klaus blinks. “Does it… what?”

Diego nudges his knee against Klaus’s, the fabric of his sweatpants smooth and warm against Klaus’s bare skin. "Allison and Luther are happy. Hell, Luther's so happy, you can't even tease him about it. He just grins at you,” he says, wrinkling his nose. "It's... nice."

"Why, Diego," says Klaus, because he's him and he can't help it, "I didn't know you were such a romantic."

"Oh my god, shut up," Diego groans. "I'm trying to say some shit, okay?" He pauses, daring Klaus to say some shit of his own, but Klaus, for once, doesn't interrupt. "Look, I'm not asking for your hand in marriage. I just think if you want to, and I want to, we should."

"You... want to. With _me_," Klaus says.

"Yeah, with you, dipshit," says Diego . He pinches the bridge of his nose, and sighs. “I’ve wanted to, for. For a while.”

“How long?” Klaus watches Diego’s face. It’s doing that twitchy thing again, where he’s trying to look stoic, but mostly looks constipated. “C’mon, man, I won’t judge. All’s fair in love and sibling incest-”

“A while, okay? I don’t know,” Diego says. “You used to, like, flirt with me, as a joke, and I kinda thought. Whatever.”

“Since we were _teenagers_? Christ, no wonder you’re so wound up,” Klaus says. Warmth blooms in his stomach at the idea that Diego’s been thinking about him for more than a decade, followed by a more practical apprehension, and maybe a smidge of guilt, that _Diego’s been thinking about him for more than a decade_. He’s really got to start paying more attention. “For the record, it wasn’t a joke. Well, kind of? Might have been. Who knows. It would have been a bad idea at the time.”

“It’s not a bad idea now?” asks Diego.

“No,” says Klaus, bumping his shoulder against Diego’s. “No, I don’t think it is.”

* 

Diego won’t so much as hold his hand on the roof, so Klaus all but drags him back into the house and into Diego’s bedroom. It’s a bit more Spartan than it was in their youths- he's thrown a lot out- and the bed is bigger, a double he's dragged in from somewhere. It's clearly an adult's room, so it's weirder than it could be to sit side by side on the edge of the bed like shy teenagers.

“We don’t have to do… anything,” says Klaus, after a minute of awkward silence. “We could just, y’know, put a pin in it for the day, come back to it.”

“Nah, I'd just chicken out then, too,” says Diego. "C'mere." He puts his hand on Klaus's arm, turning their bodies together, then moves his hand up to cup Klaus's cheek. His thumb brushes over his cheekbone, and his eyes fixate on Klaus's lips. "Let's just... I'm going to kiss you, and if one of us freaks out, or it sucks, we'll stop."

"It won't suck," says Klaus, who has been speculating about Diego's mouth for as long as he can remember, and he leans in and kisses Diego first.

Klaus has this theory. He's had cause to go against its wisdom, but it's always held true for him: if kissing someone is good, the sex will be great, and kissing someone is bad, the sex will be, too. Some people flat out don't like to kiss, but Klaus does, and by his own metric, he and Diego are going to get along like a house on fire. That mouth is just as sweet and lush as he'd thought it would be, and Diego kisses like he wants to be good at it, deep and wet, peppered with soft licks and sharp, teasing bites.

It's long, hazy minutes later that they come up for air, and the look on Diego's face is enough to tell Klaus how much he agrees that kissing each other definitely does not suck. Around the time Diego opened his mouth and licked at Klaus's tongue, a very pleasant struggle to see who could climb on top of the other had kicked off, in the course of which they'd migrated from their awkward side-by-side position to a semi-prone lounge with their legs tangled together.

"Can, can we," says Diego, pushing his hands up under Klaus's shirt. "I want to see you."

"My goodness, Mister Hargreeves, so forward," says Klaus, but he's already pulling his shirt off, and reaching for the hem of Diego's. It's rare to see Diego in so little clothing- just a t-shirt and sweatpants, no harness, no knives- but he strips out of his shirt without hesitation. Probably easy to, when you look like that. Klaus leans in again, but Diego holds him off with a hand on his chest, leaning back to look at him in the sunlight pouring through the window. It's hard not to fidget under his gaze.

“You look good,” Diego says. He sounds… tender, and his eyes are all soft; it sets off a weird fizzy sensation in Klaus’s tummy, and he can’t tell if he likes it or not.

Klaus flexes a bicep theatrically. “I knew you were only after me for my ripped, glistening bod.”

“Yeah, it’s your huge muscles that really do it for me,” says Diego rolling his eyes. "I mean it. Eating more than once a day, sleeping in a bed- it looks good on you."

Klaus rolls his eyes back, and this time when he leans in for a kiss, Diego lets him. Their bare chests rub together, and it feels like Diego's hands are everywhere, stroking down Klaus's arms and touching his face and squeezing his ass, like Diego can't make up his mind where he wants to touch most. Klaus isn't all the way hard yet- not that he isn't interested in proceedings, it just takes him a while, sometimes- but Diego very much is, and while he's clearly trying to be respectful and not just rub off on Klaus's leg, fuck that noise. Klaus wants to see, too. 

“Do I have to pretend to play it cool, or can we take our pants off?” Klaus says, hooking his fingers into the waistband of Diego’s sweats. Diego helps him tug them down in lieu of answering, and, delightfully, isn't wearing anything under them; once he's naked, he gets his hands under Klaus's skirt in a way that makes actually taking it off a challenge. They get his underwear off, at least, and then just flip the skirt up out of the way to rub against each other, rolling around and giggling like idiots.

Diego ends up on top of Klaus. Klaus's dick, properly hard, now, nudges up under Diego's balls, and Diego makes this sweet choked-off sound and humps against it. "Oh, fuck," says Diego. "Fuck me."

"Jeez, twist my arm," says Klaus, and then he actually hears the words, and pauses. "Wait, really? Is that... a thing you do?"

Diego bites his lip. Now Klaus has tried that for himself, he's a little jealous. "Yeah," he says. "Do you?"

“Do I... top? When the opportunity, uh, presents itself,” says Klaus, blinking. “Not typically something people request from me, but sure.”

“You don't have to, if it's too weird.”

“Honey, the baseline here is naked and kissing your brother. We passed the turnpike for ‘too weird’ a while back,” Klaus says. “If you want it, you can have it."

"Yeah?" Diego rolls his hips down against Klaus's cock, blush riding high on his cheeks. It should make him look vulnerable, but he mostly looks like he wants to fucking eat Klaus alive. "You're gonna give it to me?"

"Whatever you want," breathes Klaus.

Now the idea is under Klaus's skin, he really wants to give Diego what he wants, right away. There's an angel looking out for them somewhere, because Diego miraculously has lube and condoms in his dinky childhood bedside drawers. Klaus snatches the tube up first; Diego can play with his own ass whenever he likes, but Klaus has yet to have the privilege, and he really, really wants to do that too. He nudges Diego’s shoulder and they roll again, ending up with Diego on his back with his head nestled between the pillows and Klaus kneeling over him, boner tenting out his skirt.

They don’t talk while Klaus opens Diego up. Klaus, normally unable to control his quipping reflex even during sex, is too busy watching Diego’s face (and his ass, obviously, he’s not an idiot) and Diego’s looking right back at him, making these ridiculous hot little gasps with every push. It’s a challenge not to rush, but he thinks he manages it, and when he finally, finally gets his knees between Diego’s thighs, lines up the head of his cock, and sinks in, the look on Diego’s face is pure, sweet pleasure.

“K-Klaus,” Diego chokes out, grabbing at Klaus’s shoulders.

“Yeah,” says Klaus nonsensically, and fucks him, tipping forward on his knees and letting his own weight drive him into Diego’s body. He can’t go too fast like this, has to draw it out and savour it, but even so, it feels like only minutes pass between the first thrust and Diego bucking beneath him, cock twitching against his belly.

“Oh god, I’m gonna come,” Diego says, like he’s surprised. He reaches down to jerk himself off, but Klaus, brain buzzing with the feeling of Diego around him, smacks his hand away, and grips Diego’s dick by the base, making a tight circle of his fingers and squeezing.

“Don’t,” he says. “Don’t, not yet.” He keeps his fingers tight, and makes himself keep his hips still. Leaning back, he rucks up his skirt so he can see where his cock is crammed into Diego, and doesn’t move.

“Fuckin’, _ow_. What the fuck, man, let go of me,” Diego whines, wiggling on Klaus’s dick like he wants it even deeper.

“Wait,” says Klaus. He can feel Diego hot and tight around him, and it’s hell to keep from moving, but he can feel, too, in a distant way, how much better it _could_ be. “Don’t you trust me?”

Diego gives him a dirty look. There must be something on Klaus’s face that tells Diego what he’s thinking, though, because once he’s wriggled around a little more to prove he can, he falls limp on the bed, and Klaus takes his hand away. He grabs a pillow, shoves it under Diego’s hips, and hikes Diego’s legs up around his waist. When slides out and pushes back in at the new angle, Diego shudders, but he doesn’t say anything; just pants, mouth open.

Fun fact about Klaus Hargreeves: he has done a lot of drugs. Like, a lot of drugs. All kinds- uppers, downers, psychedelics, unlabelled pills bought from strangers in club bathrooms. In consequence, among other things, sensory information can come through kind of... funny. Muted. He likes his bathwater just off boiling, he can drop cigarette ash on himself without feeling it, and sometimes, circumstances depending, it can take him a while to come. Not that fucking Diego doesn’t feel _good_; it feels- well, like he’s got his dick up someone’s ass, mostly, which is, baseline, pretty good, and like his stupid hot douchebag brother is looking up at him with big shocked eyes while he plows him, which is great. It’s just that he can keep doing it kind of indefinitely, and he’s really interested to find out how much of that ride he can take Diego on, too.

Time goes… slippery. Every so often Diego will reach down to jerk himself off, and Klaus will move his hand away, and stop thrusting until Diego settles enough to continue without coming all over himself; then he’ll move again, and the heat will build between them all over again. After a while, Diego stops trying to touch himself, and Klaus has to watch his face and the arch of his spine to judge how close he is to the edge. Klaus has no idea how long they’ve been here, now; it feels like forever, and the sun has dipped below the rooftops outside by the time he thinks he’s pushed Diego far enough.

“Diego,” he says. His voice has gone rough, though he’s not sure why. “Diego, honey, look at me.”

Diego opens his eyes. Tears have gathered in the corners, where he’s squeezed them shut tight, and he when he looks at Klaus, he looks dazed, almost drunk. “Are you ever going to let me come, or are you planning to kill me with your dick?” he slurs.

“Well, I was thinking about it,” says Klaus. “But I could just leave you like this, now I think about it. Would you like that? If I fucked you, and then just left you all hard and desperate and aching to come?”

Diego’s ass flutters around Klaus’s dick. It’s hard to see the blush, because Diego is bright red in the face and has been for upwards of half an hour, but he can’t hide how he abruptly can’t look Klaus in the eyes.

“As interesting as that is, I really want to see you come,” Klaus says. “You ready for it, baby?”

“Yes,” Diego says, more a moan than a word. “P-please, let m-m-me, I wa-want,” Gratifyingly, he doesn’t try to touch himself at all.

“God,” Klaus says. “You’re so fucking hot like this, Diego, come on, come for me. Let me see it.” He grips Diego by the hips, and fucks him hard and fast, sharp little jerks aimed right at his prostate. Diego wails and claws at the bedding, and his cock, practically purple at the tip, twitches in time with Klaus’s thrusts, bouncing against his belly.

“K-Klaus, I want, I want to,” Diego stutters out. “P-p-p-p-lease-”

“Oh _fuck_,” says Klaus. He shoves his cock as deep into Diego as he can, and grinds his pelvis in a circle, and that’s that. Diego comes, untouched, spurting come all over his chest and his stomach, smearing everywhere as their bodies rub together. The noises coming out of him aren’t words at all, just thready, animal whines, and he thrashes like he’s being shocked. It goes on and on; at some point, Klaus comes, too, but it’s a distant, secondary sensation compared to Diego shaking out of himself beneath him.

It’s all the way dark by the time Klaus can move to extricate himself from Diego. His thighs are burning, his kneecaps numb, and his back’s a mess. He can’t imagine how Diego feels. When he can sit up again, he rolls over and flicks on the bedside lamp so he can see, and helps him unfold himself from the impromptu plow pose Klaus bent him into. He flops, boneless, on the bed, and doesn’t even gripe when Klaus grabs his t-shirt to wipe the disaster of cooling jizz off their torsos. They lie side-by-side, not exactly cuddling but not not touching.

“We don’t have to do it like that every time, do we?” Diego says, in a raspy murmur. “Not that it was, y’know, bad, but I can’t do freaky Tantric shit on a regular basis, man, my dick’ll fall off.”

The insanely hot sex had distracted Klaus a little from the emotional realities of the situation, but hearing Diego talk like that, like them fucking again (on a _regular basis_, he said) is a foregone conclusion, makes his chest feel fuzzy and light. “You liked it, then?”

“Man, shut up,” says Diego. He lifts a hand, like he intends to roll over, and drops it again, letting it bounce on the bed and touch Klaus’s hand. “It was alright.”

Klaus laughs, too happy to argue, and links their pinky fingers together. “Oh, well. If it was alright, that’s… alright.”


End file.
